Quick Poll

The NRA is supporting a bill, HB 382, before the Montana Legislature to allow young hunters (younger than the current 13 years) to legally buy a license and take and tag game animals if they are hunting with a parent or other adult (defined as 21 or older, passed hunter safety, and hunted previous season). The NRA would like MSSA to support this bill.

I like the idea in some respects, but have some reservations. I’d like your opinion – Should MSSA support this bill?

Let me state some of the obvious pros and cons:

The primary argument for the bill is that it would help hunter recruitment – get some kids afield and involved in hunting before their young lives get captured by other activities. We certainly do need to be paying attention to hunter recruitment.

One argument against the idea is made by hunter safety instructors. They say that kids don’t really “get” the importance of firearm safety until they’re about 13 years old (current minimum age for hunting). They also argue that kids can go afield or to hunting camp now with parents or others, they just can’t legally shoot and tag game.

Some also say that there are adults who would just use this opportunity to get another “family” game tag – that dad would shoot the animal and put the kid’s tag on it, training the youth shooter into an inappropriate culture about hunting.

About the maturity and gun safety argument, the response I appreciate is that parents know their kids best and should be allowed to determine if their kid is ready to actively hunt.

I queried a psychologist (a mom from a gun-owning family) about this maturity issue. Here’s what she had to say:

“Kids’ brains do go through a lot of changes as they enter their teen years. Some of the changes have to do with mylenation of the frontal lobes (basically making the parts of the brain that deal with impulse control, planning, judgment, cause and effect thinking etc. more efficient). Although a 9 year old could grasp the mechanics of gun safety and even have well-ingrained safety promoting habits if they are raised with conscientious gun owners, they could likely struggle when faced with the use of a gun in a novel situation that required good judgment and impulse control (I think she’s talking about “buck fever” – GM). (The same kind of reasoning applies to the question of the age that a child should be allowed to drive associated with carrying firearms and driving vehicles. )

“There is no absolute marker for brain maturation but we do have neuropsychological tests which can look at areas of brain functioning to determine if a child is at peer level or has developmental lags. With adults the markers are more clear because their brains are not developing at the same rate children’s brains are. e.g. if an adult has deficits in frontal love functioning, it is not likely that time alone will fix the problem, whereas with kids, sometimes the problem is merely a developmental lag.”

About the hunter recruitment argument, it is said that nearly all of these kids would become hunters anyway, even if a year or two later, because they come from hunting families – how else would young hunters get afield. So, this concept would only get the same kids hunting earlier who would be recruited as hunters later – would not effect a net, long term increase in hunter recruitment.

Finally, because this is an “apprentice hunter” measure, it would also apply to people older than young kids, people who might wish to sample hunting for the first time. In this respect it might be a good companion for MSSA’s SB 185 to allow non-resident college students to hunt for the price of residents.

So, what say you? Support not support (I don’t see MSSA opposing this)? Also, if I missed any important pros or cons, let me know.

Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association
http://www.mtssa.org
author, Gun Laws of Montana
http://www.mtpublish.com